The Toa of Earth
by CodeOperator
Summary: A story about human Marines finding themselves on an inexplicable and incredible journey into the world of Bionicle, set in the year 2150 A.D. OCs galore, both human and Bonkle!
1. The Invasion

**Author's Note: Alright, so this is a reboot of an old (And now cringe-worthy) story that I wrote in my much younger years. I like the concept, but I feel that I didn't do it justice (Or finish it for that matter), so I'm going to do a hard reboot, yay! Basically, a lot's going to be different, but a lot of key elements will be at least recognizable, like there being humans and Bonklez in the same story. And no, there are no humanized Bonklez. This first chapter is basically setting up the human elements, the Bonklez will be here in the next chapter, I assure you. So without further ado, here's the first chapter of my reboot of The Toa of the Earth (Now shortened to just The Toa of Earth, my original working title).**

The Toa of Earth.  
Chapter One: The Invasion.

Klaxon sirens wailed, red warning lights flared, and armored boots thundered to and fro on the steel deck deep in the belly of the seafaring metal monster known as the USS Kronos, a titan-class aircraft carrier which was currently preparing to send forth the hellfire of its amphibious elements. Infantry readied their weapons and armor, landing craft armed all munitions and engines came online, amphibious tanks activated their targeting systems, and CAS aircraft began takeoff procedures and completed their preflight checklists. Everything was in place, the South American Coalition was about to get a very rude awakening about sending troops over the North American border. In theory it was simple, two platoons assault two different beaches at the same time, and their defenses already weakened by Direct Action Recon Marines dropped behind the lines the night before to carry out precision strikes against artillery emplacements, radio outposts, and command posts, most of which had gone well and without a hitch. Second Lieutenant John Peters, leader of First Platoon, was in charge of assaulting Tambaba Beach and assaulting inward and to the west to Joao Pessoa. He had the sinking suspicion that this would be far more difficult in practice. As put by his Platoon Sergeant, "The plan changes when the first shot is fired." He took one last moment to glance at a photo of his ex-girlfriend, which he then concealed under a map of the beach and the inland territory mounted on his gauntlet. He'd been meaning to talk to her again, or at least apologize for leaving so abruptly for the military without as much as a goodbye.  
"Relax," he muttered to himself, "It's just a beach landing, you've done it in practice dozens of times before without a hitch, nothing will go wrong." But that was the problem, he almost knew something would go wrong, he could feel it in the air, in the nervous anticipation of the Marines under his command. He jumped at the sound of the naval guns discharging their explosive payloads onto the beach, hoping to soften the enemy defenses enough at the last minute to give the Marines that much more of a fighting chance. Without warning, a siren blared, immediately followed by an order for all amphibious infantry to load up and prepare to disembark the ship. He swallowed his fear and put on a face of ice cold resolution, intended to strengthen the resolve of the Marines.  
"Last man!"  
Peters tapped the driver and gave him the signal that they were loaded up. The rear hatch closed and locked. All was dark until the red lights came on in the interior of the Amphibious Assault Vehicle. The Marines knew from pure indoctrination that no matter what they heard or what they saw, do not panic and do not stand up until the lights go green and the doors go down.  
"Hey Jenkins," a Marine began, "You know this is a nudist beach we're assaulting, right?"  
"Yeah, why?"  
"Just saying bro, you might actually see a naked chick in person for once!"  
The Marines all laughed at this joke, despite the tension.  
"So your mother doesn't count, then?"  
This earned a fair amount of "Oooh"s from the surrounding Marines, actually causing Peters to crack a bit of a grin.  
"Lock it up, Marines!" A giant Gunnery Sergeant said in an unusually deep tone. The Marines, seemingly knowing the man, shut up immediately and remained silent for the rest of the ride.

And the lights went green. Peters stood and in perfect synch with the others sprinted as fast as he could out of the AAV as he could. There was something he remembered from The Basic School, something his instructor had mentioned, "You can think you're ready all you want, but when you see your men screaming in pain, blood as far as the eye can see, limbs with no owners and corpses aplenty, you will not be prepared for that." It could not have rung truer than it did then. The beach was a mess of bodies, of dead and dying. Machine gun nests opened up on the invaders, mortars rained down like brimstone, and at that moment he realized that he had frozen. A Staff Sergeant, perhaps he was feeling compassionate, tackled him into the sand, forcing his head down as tracers zipped overhead. The Sergeant shouted at a Marine armed with a grenade launcher to engage the offending pillbox, which he did gladly, the resulting explosion sending soot, sand, concrete, and a hand flying in a multitude of directions.  
"Hey!" The Sergeant shouted at him, "Get your ass in the game! I don't have time to babysit you, get up and shoot!"  
Perhaps it was the Sergeant shouting at him, perhaps it was the earsplitting SNAP of a stray bullet hitting the rocky beach about a yard from him, but he was back and training took over. Chambering a round and disengaging the safety, he began to engage targets as he saw them. He felt a hand tap his shoulder and he turned. It was that same Sergeant, kneeling next to him, smoke drifting from the barrel of his LMG, now pointing at a boulder that was unoccupied, good enough cover to survive this living hell. John scrambled to his feet and ran, a mortar exploding behind him, the resulting shockwave sending him hurtling into the boulder. He turned and saw the Sergeant, unconscious on the ground, tracers cracking the air around him. Priming a smoke grenade, he threw it a good distance and double tapped an idiot who decided to try to fetch more machine gun ammo for his pillbox. After dispatching the immediate threat, he sprinted back to the sergeant, noting blood pooling in the rocky sand around him. He grabbed him by the back of his vest, dragging the massive man to the boulder as fast as he possibly could.  
"Corpsman up!" It was all he could think to say, praying that the man who had assuredly saved his life would live through this nightmare. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied a slighter man running as fast as he could to the position, only to be shot in the head.  
"No!"  
The Corpsman sat up groggily, tearing the helmet from his head, hand on his head in pain.  
"I'm good!" The young black man shouted back, grabbing his breaching shotgun and running the rest of the way to the boulder. The guy couldn't have been more than nineteen, twenty years old at most. He pulled the two tabs at the sides of the Sergeant's vest, opening it like a briefcase. He muttered to himself the injuries he saw, "Shrapnel, spinal fracture, broken ribs." He looked lower, noting the blood pooling from his thigh. "Damn, femoral artery took some shrapnel."

John ducked instinctively as a bullet snapped off the boulder on the beach. An assaultman with an anti-structure rocket let loose a Novel Explosive round into the offending pillbox, turning concrete into powder and men into vapor. So far the Marines were making good headway on the beach, it was rocky enough to provide good cover, and the enemies had been scrambled by previous Force Recon strikes and naval bombardment to the point that communication didn't go beyond short range radios and shouting. This meant that when someone ran out of ammo, he couldn't just request more from whoever had some to spare, he or the assistant gunner had to abandon the machine gun to fetch another belt, leaving it exposed to the advancing attackers. Glancing back to the incapacitated Sergeant, John saw that the shrapnel in his thigh had been extracted and the wound sealed with medi-gel. Noticing that the Corpsman was waving his hand in front of his face, he looked up from the grim sight and into the face of a kid not much younger than John.  
"Sir," he began with a strained tone, "He'll be fine, I've got him stabilized, but you need to get in the game, start leading. Your Marines are alive but they're scattered, start directing fire and make this living hell easier on us all."  
He shakily nodded, fumbling for the button on his headset built into his stifling helmet, staring intently at the map on his wrist. "All units, this is Lieutenant Peters, request all assaultmen and grenadiers engage the pillboxes I'm marking on your HUD and map." A flurry of "Yes Sir" and "Copy that, Sir" came through the radio, and a maelstrom of rockets and grenades flew forth to their designated targets, reducing seemingly impenetrable concrete machine gun nests to mere rubble and ashes.  
The beach was quiet. Marines nervously looked to one another and peeked at the defenses, most of them smoldering, if they were standing at all. Squad leaders quietly and nervously called for sitreps, the corpsmen breaking cover every now and then to treat a fallen Marine.  
"Move up," Peters called over the radio. Slowly, cautiously, the men complied, not a single weapon lowered. The occasional gunshot went off from a Marine finishing a surviving hostile, but other than that, it was eerily quiet. Peters radioed in, "Command, this is Peters, beachhead secure, over."  
"Copy Lieutenant," the aged colonel responded heartily. "We're sending in the landing craft, Raider units report all artillery and mortar teams neutralized. Be advised, there is an Army Intelligence Officer inbound, callsign "Owl," you'll be escorting this asset to the heart of the city, how copy, over?"  
"Solid copy Command, out."

Two hours. Two mind numbingly still hours. The Hovering Amphibious Landing Crafts had arrived within ten minutes and begun unloading troops and equipment. Once the Marines had penetrated through the jungle and into the city inland, they would begin moving in temporary infrastructure and the command element. The classic game of standby to standby was being played on the account of this Army spook.  
"Taking his sweet damn time, isn't he?"  
Peters looked up to see a new arrival, a boot Lance Corporal by the name of Masterson. First deployment, no combat experience, much less confirmed kills, he was as green as the reactive armor they wore.  
"Can I help you, Corporal?"  
"Nah," the kid sat down, a thick northeastern accent permeating his speech. He took out a cigarette and lit it with an old fashioned zippo lighter.  
_Must be a family heirloom, _Peters mused to himself.  
The boot looked up from his lighter at the Lieutenant staring at him and decided to do what only seemed natural. He took out a cigarette and offered it to Peters, puffing a smoke ring.  
"Want one, boss?"  
Peters shook his head and held his hand up.  
"I once had a girlfriend who smoked, didn't end well for either of us."  
Masterson shrugged and blew another ring. "Suit yourself, boss."  
Peters nodded and checked his rifle, wishing he'd brought a cleaning rod for it, there was no way something hadn't got in something with the amount of sand and chipped rock the mortars had kicked up.  
"Corporal, did you bring a cleaning rod by chance?"  
"Oh, yeah, actually, lemme see here…" he detached his hard case assault pack and opened the top, rummaging through it.  
"Here we go," he pulled out a folding cleaning rod and presented it to Peters.  
"Much obliged," he stated quietly as he entered his "Zone," as he called it, and began cleaning his rifle. Sure enough, there was a fair bit of debris in the barrel and action, close enough to the firing pin that it might become a problem. In his Zen-like trance, he field stripped his rifle as well, every part of it as familiar to him as the fingers that took them apart. As quick as he'd taken it apart and inspected it, he'd reassembled it, every piece locked into position, the rifle as clean as it had been aboard the Kronos.  
"Good timing," the Lance Corporal commented, as a AVT-9 transport aircraft was approaching quickly, slowing as it descended above them. Peters raised his balaclava and reattached his goggles, filtering out the sand and rock fragments the VTOL kicked up. Masterson, however, was not as experienced, and spent the better part of a minute choking on sand, trying futilely to rub it out of his eyes. Peters rolled his eyes at his inexperience and tossed him a canteen.  
"Wash them out, rubbing it in makes it worse."  
The Corporal urgently complied, dumping water into his eyes, groaning in pain. He then attempted to down a swig from it, but ultimately just ended up coughing it up, sand mixed in.  
"Dammit…" he groaned as he bent over coughing.  
"Hey," Peters roughly slapped his back, "Take it as a learning experience. You good?"  
"Yeah boss, I'm good." He stood back up and rolled his shoulders, blinking out the last bits of sand.  
The side door of the VTOL opened and a single soldier hopped out, a carbine in one hand and a briefcase in the other. Peters approached quickly, slinging his weapon across his chest. He reached out and shook the soldier's smaller gloved hand, noting the rank of Second Lieutenant.  
"I'm Second Lieutenant Peters, UNAMC, I'm to escort you into the city, I assume you have specifics?"  
The soldier nodded and removed the helmet from her head, revealing a sun-kissed freckled face, blonde hair tied back in a non-regulation ponytail, a soft jaw, and piercing sky blue eyes.  
"Second Lieutenant Catherine McClain. And yeah, I've got specifics, as long as you've got the firepower to get me where I need to go."  
Peters froze in place, unable to speak. This was her, the woman in his photograph, the ex he'd never officially broken up with, the woman he still cared about. He wanted to lower his balaclava and tear his helmet from his head, show his face, but he knew that it wasn't the time. The battlefield was no place for personal business.  
"You okay, Peters?"  
She cocked her head the way she used to, sending a jolt through his spine as memories leaked back one by one. He shook his head, clearing his thoughts.  
"Fine, McClain. I've got a Puma on the beach, we should be at the city in about twenty mikes. Is that quick enough?"  
"As long as my target's still there, yes."  
"Good." He began walking with her at his side to the parked Puma, a lightweight, two-seater, speedy and unarmored little jeep, useful for transporting assets quickly, but little else. "My men will remain on the beach, too many casualties were taken for the unit to remain combat effective for the time being," he spoke as he opened the door for her, earning a quizzical look for his attempt at chivalry. He swallowed and mentally berated himself as he walked around the front and entered the driver's side, starting the engine. "I'm under the impression that Force Recon and Raiders are already engaging resistance, we shouldn't have to do a whole lot of fighting if we're lucky." He shifted the gear out of park and into drive, speeding off along the well-worn path to the city. "But just in case," he raised his voice to be heard over the wind whipping her golden hair back and the roaring engine propelling them along, "Stay behind me. Have you been in combat before?" She shook her head, donning a headset and shades, glancing at Peters and tapping them, indicating for him to get on the radio for ease of communication. Peters nodded and sealed his helmet, synching his comms to hers.  
"I have," she spoke, "But it wasn't very intense."  
"Any confirmed kills?"  
"Negative, you?"  
"Yes."  
"How many?"  
"I don't keep count," he said in a false gravelly voice he'd adopted for the sake of concealing his identity.  
Silence prevailed for a few seconds before she made an attempt at conversation.  
"So, you got someone waiting for you back home?"  
"I did, but I screwed up, left without so much as a goodbye. Don't ask, I just hate goodbyes. It was cowardly, I know." She cocked her head again at this, beginning to put a few pieces together.  
"What about you, McClain, you got a lucky guy or girl back home?"  
"If you count my horse Beth, then yeah."  
He nodded at this. _That's right,_ he thought, _Beth, the palomino. I always liked that horse._ He thought back to their early dates on the countryside. He'd visit from Texas, and she'd visit from Virginia. It was nice, she even taught him to ride, and Beth was a patient horse, despite his numerous mistakes.  
"My boyfriend disappeared," she spoke up again, "Ran off to join the Marines, kinda like you."  
"Pissed?"  
"Not anymore. At first, hell yeah, I was ready to punch a baby or something. But after a while, I guess I kinda understood. He moved around a lot as a kid, hated goodbyes, I guess I understand if he didn't want to say it. 'Too much finality,' he'd say." She sighed, leaning back in the Kevlar seat. "I wouldn't mind if he'd just call for once, at least try to explain himself. I don't even know what he's doing or where in the world he is." She paused, glancing curiously at Peters. "But why am I telling you all this?"  
Peters introspectively thought for an answer. "Well, I guess we might die any minute. Airstrike, mines in the road, an ambush. May as well die with a friend."  
She nodded at this, slipping a picture out of her baseball cap and gazing at it fondly, almost sadly.  
"I really cared about him, and I think he did me."  
"You don't know?" Peters briefly took his eyes off of the road to gaze at the picture of him and her riding Beth together. It had been taken by her mother after his had died. He'd never been good with emotions, he admitted to himself, and in a way he understood if she didn't know if he'd loved her or not.  
"Not really. I mean, I do know, but he never really said it. It scared him, I think. He never really knew his dad, he died in the Amazon War when he was a kid. His mom drank a lot after that, died in a car accident. Everyone he loved died, I just think he didn't want to tell me for fear of losing me too."  
"You say that as if he hasn't already lost you."  
"Like I said, I forgive him. I don't think I'd jump at the opportunity, but if he came back, I think I just might take him."  
She noticed him glancing at the photo in her gloved hand.  
"That's me and him. And Beth, can't forget Beth," she chuckled at this. "Do you have a picture of her, or have you moved on?"  
"Can't say I have." He slowed the car and pulled over. She looked over nervously, hand on her carbine.  
"Why did you stop, ambush?"  
"Negative." He hesitantly placed his hand on his gauntlet and opened it, taking out the photo, but pausing instead and folding it in half before she could see it. He handed it to her.  
"You can open it when we're done here. Everyone needs an incentive, right?" She confusedly took the picture and placed it in her pants pocket.  
"Sure…" She checked her carbine, ensuring that it was ready to go in the event of an ambush. He hit the gas once more, speeding along the old worn path.

About ten minutes later, they arrived at the demolished city entrance. It was entirely impassable through the Puma, so they exited and climbed the rubble on foot. Peters had rock climbed for a hobby and was quickly to the top of the monument of destruction, helping up Catherine when he noticed her struggling.  
"Thanks," she breathed. "Virginia's too flat for this crap."  
"Don't mention it." He slid down the angled rubble pile, landing on a scorched sedan. He hopped down and looked around. No gunfire in the background, and only a few bodies. What happened here? He heard the gravelly sound of her sliding down the rubble and landing next to him, the rubble crunching under her boots.  
"You might want to keep that weapon ready," he said quietly as he took a low ready stance and jogged to a concrete barrier. Taking a knee, he activated the infrared setting in his goggles, scanning for any possible threats. Fortunately, most of the windows were blown out from the naval bombardment and previous airstrikes, as infrared vision can't pass through windows. Seeing nothing, neither enemy nor friendly, he raised his left hand and motioned for her to approach. She jogged over to his position, taking a knee next to him.  
"Okay," he whispered, his voice filtered through his advanced balaclava, "We're going to bound from cover to cover, I don't like this."  
"City shouldn't be this abandoned," she agreed. "I've been to Joao Pessoa before, it was a tourist trap before the SAC war broke out. And no, I haven't been to that beach before."  
"Not the nudist type?" He replied with a sarcastic smirk under his balaclava.  
"You wish, Devil," she replied, equally sarcastic.  
"Oh do I now?" He replied, keeping up the banter, though to the outside world they were silent, thanks to their noise-filtering masks and linked headsets. "Just saying, not much going on up top there."  
She scoffed at this, walking backwards as he walked forwards, keeping up 360 security.  
"Like reactive armor's ever been flattering. Or cool," she muttered, noting the intense heat of the summer.  
"That's one of the perks of being a Devil Dog," he replied as he briefly and jokingly flexed his left bicep, "We get to roll our sleeves."  
"My boyfriend used to mention that before he left," she noted, freezing and raising her weapon at a sudden movement, but dismissed it as just a crow.  
"Sounds like he joined for all the right reasons," he joked.  
"He did, just didn't leave for the right ones."  
The two continued in silence, occasionally walking back to back, but mostly bounding.  
"So I need to know," he began, breaking the ominous silence, "What are we looking for?"  
"Leave that to me, we're not very far."  
"Helpful as always, aren't you?" He muttered under his breath.  
"What was that?"  
"Nothing." They continued, bounding to cars, piles of rubble, debris, and other various barricades and natural cover.  
"Help…"  
Peters immediately flung a fist up at a 90 degree angle, ordering a halt. He scanned the area, searching for the voice.  
"Please, help…"  
"There!" Catherine sprinted over to a man half buried under shattered concrete and rebar, lifting rubble off of him as fast as he could. Peters sprinted to the fallen Marine's side and took a knee, raising his rifle to pull security. Catherine removed the front filtering half of her balaclava and removed her eyepro, revealing her face to the man.  
"What happened here?" Catherine inquired, wide eyed at the amount of blood splattered on the dust-coated concrete the Marine lay on, his back very broken.  
"They came out of nowhere," he gasped, "Weren't SACs, weren't civvies or militia either, looked professional." He coughed up blood, some of it painting Catherine's face, further draining it of color.  
"They took some of us," his face was rapidly becoming paler and paler, "Don't know where they took them, it looked bad."  
"Did you notice any markings, any specifics, anything that might tell us who attacked you?"  
"They used European weapons, spoke German, French, and Spanish. Their boss sounded British, had some kind of chrome revolver. Called himself the black wi-" before he could finish, an arrow flew out of nowhere and struck the man in the neck, piercing his jugular and injecting what appeared to be some sort of neurotoxin. Catherine stumbled back as Peters shouted for her to get down as he suppressed where the archer had fired from. She ducked behind some of the rubble she had removed, prone on the ground. The man was seizing, violently convulsing and foaming at the mouth, blood mingling with it. Eventually he stopped, and he was very, very dead.  
"Hey!"  
Peters grabbed and shook her, snapping her back into reality.  
"Don't look at him, okay? He's gone, nothing you can do! I think I hit the archer, he was in that resort over there." He placed his rifle on the ground and placed both hands on her shoulder, depolarizing his goggles to reveal his navy blue eyes. "I need a no bs assessment, can you fight?"  
"Yeah," she said, her heartbeat racing, breathing erratically.  
"Are you positive, Cat?"  
She slowly faded out of her shocked state. "You…used my boyfriend's old nickname for me…"  
"Erm, Cat's a common nickname for Catherine," he quickly responded.  
She just shook her head, a bit too dazed to think. The two got up and approached the building, both weapons raised. Peters touched his finger to his balaclava, deactivating the silencing function.  
"We know you're in here, stand up with your hands behind your head!"  
They both stopped at aimed at the reception desk, where several of Peters' bullets had landed. Catherine vaulted over the desk, searching for signs of their mystery archer.  
"Lieutenant, I've got a blood trail, you hit him."  
Peters vaulted over the desk, noting that there wasn't a whole lot of blood or signs of dragging, meaning he'd likely only been hit once, and superficially at that.  
"He's still dangerous, Cat, stay alert."  
The blood trailed behind a staff-only door behind the reception desk. Peters nodded and the two stacked on the door. Catherine opened a hard case magnetically attached to her reactive thigh armor panel and retrieved a small rectangular device with a screen on one side and flat on the other. She placed it on the door and pressed a button, activating the device. The two peered at the screen, the room beyond showed in a skeletal black and white form.  
"Sonar," she explained, "Army gets all the good stuff."  
"No movement," Peters commented. "Let's go in quiet."  
She nodded and removed the sonar device, replacing it in her thigh-mounted hard case. Peters held up three fingers, counting down. Upon making a fist, Catherine opened the door and Peters quietly moved into the dark room, scanning.  
"Night vision," he whispered, despite his balaclava having reactivated its exterior silencing.  
The two simultaneously activated the night vision in their eyepro, his goggles and her shades respectively. Peters activated an IR laser, invisible to the naked eye, but visible through his goggles, and zeroed to his weapon, meaning that wherever the laser pointed, that's where his rifle would hit. The two entered a large ballroom, many of the tables overturned or destroyed, the chandelier crashed to the ground.  
"Blood trail's gone, stay alert. He's here."  
Catherine nodded and motioned for him to fan out, heading off to the right of the unlit room in the process. Peters moved to the left, both of them moving silently, sweeping through the room, their hearts beating rapidly in dreadful anticipation. However, they both reached the end of the ballroom without incident. Catherine cocked her head at Peters, earning a shrug from him.  
"We must've missed some-"  
Before he could finish, a black-dressed man in a form-fitting hexfab stealth uniform. Catherine shouted and jumped back as the man drew a bright blue solid photon knife and hacked away at Peters. The reactive armor managed to stop a few strikes, but his goggles weren't strong enough to stop the slice that went straight from his eyebrow to his cheek, cutting out and cauterizing his right eye, earning a pained scream from Peters, who lashed out with his left fist, landing the punch on the man's nose, breaking it with a sickening crack. Peters leapt on top of the assailant, powering up the non-lethal shock knuckles in his gloves to full power and began wailing away at the man's face, electrocuting and battering him at the same time. Somehow, the spasming man managed to stab upwards into a gap between the reactive vest's armor plates, cutting deep between Peters' ribs, earning another cry of pain. The knife-wielding man used this moment to roll on top of Peters, raising his knife for a final downward thrust.  
"I don't have a clear shot!" Catherine yelled as her shaking IR laser wavered over the two fighting men. Despite the broken nose, previous bullet wound in his right shoulder, and the shocking beat down, the assailant just kept fighting, as did Peters, doing everything in his power to force the knife away from himself. He managed to grab the archer's wrists, but the man was somehow stronger, as if affected by some sort of drug, enabling him to remain incredibly strong despite his wounds. He forced the knife downwards, inch by inch closer to Peters' throat.  
"Die, you bloody wanker!" The man growled in a cockney accent as he forced the knife within an inch of the Lieutenant's throat. Peters needed Catherine to overcome her fear, to take the shot, and so he ripped off his balaclava and played his ace.  
"Cat, it's me, John!"  
She stopped shaking immediately.  
"John?"  
_BANG._  
The shot reverberated throughout the dance hall, deafening both John and Catherine briefly. Peters weakly rolled the corpse off of him, a bullethole through the side of his head. He stood slowly and painfully, attempting to ignore the pain in his ribs and in his now destroyed eye. He removed his destroyed goggles, balaclava, and his helmet, right eye closed. She dropped her weapon and slowly approached him, placing her hand on his right cheek where the cauterized wound extended.  
"John…" She began, almost tearful. "You…you're hurt, we need to call for help!"  
"Cat." He silenced her with an index finger to her lips. "I'll be fine. There's a first aid kit in my pack, it's got morphine, gauze for my eye, and medigel for the stab wound. I can continue."  
She swallowed hard, glancing by him to see the man she'd killed, her first. Suddenly feeling lightheaded, she sat down with her back resting against the wall, a deathly pale complexion discoloring her face. John sat next to her and removed the front plates of his vest, followed by removing his bloody tactical shirt before applying medigel to the wound. The foam expanded, the unique properties of it coagulating the blood, applying pressure from the inside, and expanding to seal the wound. He gritted his teeth, forcing back the groan of pain that came to his lips from the pressure-induced agony in his side. He proceeded to grab some gauze and a patch of soft sterile cotton, placing the patch over his eye and wrapping the gauze around his head diagonally over his eye, crossing over his black hair, and covering the destroyed eye. Finally, he took the needle of morphine and shakily injected it into his exposed forearm with hands trembling in pain, sighing in relief as the powerful drug took effect. He leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes briefly, his breathing beginning to regulate as the pain lessened.  
_Can't fall asleep_, he thought to himself, _have to fight it._ He opened his eyes slowly, sitting up properly from his slouch. An unsettling sound reached his ears from behind an overturned table. If he didn't know any better, he could've sworn it was the sound of someone retching. Reality smacked him in the face.  
_Ah crap,_ he thought as he slowly stood as to avoid passing out from low blood pressure and quickly walked to the table the sound came from. Sure enough, there was Cat in the fetal position, a sickly look on her face, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. A pang of sympathy rocked his mind, persuading him to sit by her and sit her up, wrapping his arm around her in the process to steady her, or so he told himself.  
"You okay?"  
"Do I look okay, John? My boyfriend almost got killed in front of me, lost his eye, and I killed someone! Oh God…" with that gruesome memory refreshed, she violently stood and bent over the table, vomiting once more, coughing at the end. She groaned as she slumped down next to John, one hand over her mouth.  
"Here," he offered her his canteen. Despite most Marines carrying a hydro-pack, Peters believed in the old fashioned equipment, and preferred that his back be free for carrying more important items such as his Assault Hard Pack and survival equipment. She accepted, her hands shaking as much as his had before the morphine took effect. He watched from his good left eye as she drank, gargling the water and spitting the contaminated liquid out, a grimace clear on her face as she returned the canteen to John.  
"You know, I wasn't much different."  
She turned to face his patched eye as he looked forward. "What do you mean?"  
"My first kill," he began, uncomfortable memories resurfacing anew. "It was only a few months ago when the SAC sent their guys over the Mexican border. My company responded, and I was in charge of a platoon of guys tasked with disabling enemy anti-air batteries so we could regain air superiority. I was new, scared, didn't know what the hell I was doing. The Basic School didn't prepare me for what I saw there, so I tended to command from the rear. Eventually, I didn't have a choice, had to start shooting. For the most part, it was just a bunch of possibles, no confirmed kills, mostly suppression work. But eventually, I did get a confirmed kill. I didn't see it when it happened, but I saw the body later on." He paused, exhaling quietly. "He had a bullet in his throat, lodged in the spinal cord. I hadn't compensated for bullet drop, and what could've been a quick death was probably a slow and agonizing one." He shuddered at the thought of choking to death on his own blood, unable to move anything because of a bullet in his spinal cord. "It was a horrible way to die. I threw up, didn't talk to anyone, damn near passed out on the ride back from the engagement. Freaking sucked. I started thinking about his family, you know? What if he was married, had kids? Parents to support, siblings, a godfather. I took that man. He might not have been anything to me, but to his friends, his comrades, his family, he was at least something." He bowed his head in remembrance. "My Master Guns, old grizzly named Lyons, he told me something that helped him. He said, 'Don't get used to it, if you get used to it, you lose your humanity. But the thing is, we don't have to be monsters, we just have to recognize that it was him or us, and even if he'd escaped, he would've been back to kill again. Every time you shoot someone, you're saving someone else.'"  
John sat in silence, letting the advice sink in before slowly turning her chin to face him.  
"You saved me, Cat. You saved countless other Marines that he would've killed. I owe you my life."  
He brought her in for a long overdue embrace, squeezing her armored form against his lean and bloodied chest.  
"I missed you," she whispered softly, a tear trickling down her cheek, color beginning to return to it.  
"I missed you too." They broke the embrace and sat next to each other for a short while, exhausted, taking strength from their respite. He broke the silence at a thought that occurred to him.  
"Cat, when you said that your boyfriend almost died, does that mean-"  
She cut him off with a quick kiss, holding it for a few seconds as he closed his eyes with her and returned it, enjoying being with his lover once more. She broke the kiss and stared with a small smirk on her lips.  
"Interpret that how you will."  
She stood and retrieved her rifle, walking over to the briefcase she'd set down with John's reactive vest and tactical shirt, retrieving all three.  
"Get dressed," she said quietly as she tossed him the shirt and vest, which he quickly put on, uncomfortable with being semi-exposed in a combat zone. She knelt and opened her briefcase, powering up a computer, the red holo-display flashing to life before her sky blue eyes.  
"We're about five blocks away from our objective," she said, a surprisingly calm voice slipping from her lips.  
"And what might that be?" He fixed the last panel in place and knelt next to her, observing what appeared to be a three-dimensional map of a compound.  
"This is a government fallout shelter that was taken over by Black Widow International, the security firm that hired and contracted out the PMC we just fought. JSOC wants me to get in there and do a scan of the room with the computer, it'll save a full color, three dimensional render of the room."  
"Any idea what's in there?"  
"No," she responded simply as she closed the computer and briefcase before tapping a few buttons on her wrist-mounted GPS, a holographic waypoint and route appearing on Peters' shades. She checked her magazine and slapped it back in, turning to John with determination visible in her eyes. He was almost startled by how quickly she'd recovered, how different she was already. _But hey,_ he thought,_ if it gets the job done._  
"Let's go." 

**Author's note: Alright, so that's the end of Chapter One. For any of you who have either the guts or insanity to read the original story that this is rebooting, don't try to draw too many correlations, this is going to be different. For those of you who are entirely unfamiliar with it, don't worry, the Bonklez are coming very, very soon. I'll try to update this every few weeks, hopefully on Tuesdays, but depending on the schedule that might change, in which case I'll let you guys know. Until next time, Operators.**


	2. Through the Looking Glass

**Author's Note: So after Christmas Break, I feel myself nice and recharged for writing again! Just so you guys know, I won't be including any of the 2015 reboot story, I'm keeping this within the original universe. Thanks so much for the support all, I appreciate the reviews, they really help! Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and without further ado, here's the second chapter of The Toa of Earth!**

The Toa of Earth.

Chapter Two: Deadly Shelter.

John held his handgun in his left hand, attempting to compensate for the loss of his right eye, pulling security as Catherine quietly scaled a small pile of rubble from a building hit by some sort of explosive, most likely ordinance from an attack jet long returned to the carrier. She carefully crested the peak of the moderately sized grey heap of concrete, using the adjustable reflex sight to toggle from a 1x zoom to a 3.5x zoom, using this enhanced magnification to scan the terrain. So far, it was looking clear. She'd abandoned the idea of using infrared to track any possible hostiles, as Hexfab, the stealthy material the Black Widow PMCs seemed to use for their uniforms, was meant to be undetectable to infrared, Near Infrared, or NIR, thermals, ultraviolet, and even low-powered X-rays. The only real way to spot them was to use her naked eye, and the black coloring of the material blended in unnervingly well to the urban terrain. She spent about two minutes waiting for any sort of movement, any small indication that would indicate a concealed adversary, but nothing arose. Not satisfied that they were at all safe, but satisfied that if they weren't, she'd done the best she could to prevent it. She slowly and soundlessly crawled back down the small heap of rubble, slinking to a halt on John's left side, patting his shoulder to signal it was clear. The two stood as one, Catherine switching to John's right side to cover his blind side. Advancing down the street, they paused at the corner, around which their target was supposed to lie.  
"You ready?" Catherine cautiously asked John as she took point on the corner.  
"Yes ma'am," he responded determinedly.  
"One, we're both butter bars, two, no heroics, I'm on point. Got it?"  
He nodded, checking his pistol, uncomfortable with and unused to using his left hand and eye to shoot. "Got it."  
"Okay," she breathed, checking her GPS one last time just to confirm the location of their target. "Here we go. On three. One, two, three!" The two burst around the corner, weapons raised, but slowly came to a halt in front of the door, looking around. They'd drawn no fire, there were no guards, and the shelter, though damaged, was intact and seemingly abandoned on the outside. John checked the large blast door, sealed from the inside.  
"Cat," he started, inspecting the steel portal, "Any idea how we're going to get inside of this?"  
She quickly approached the door and opened her briefcase, removing her computer before retrieving yet another gadget from within, a small device similar to the X-Ray device she'd procured earlier. She attached it to the door and powered up the screen, the pale green light reflecting in her shades.  
"Scanning for possible holes in the firewall," she muttered half to herself, half to John. "Okay... isolating the hole…patching through it…and we're in." She removed the device and repacked her briefcase, standing upright just as the doors opened. The two peered inside, wary of the unnatural darkness that enveloped the shelter's interior. They activated their weapon lights and cautiously moved in, checking every single corner, conscious of every creak, every footstep, and every breath as they approached a dusty iron stairwell. Choosing to descend it, John insisted that he went first, as his weapon was more compact.  
"Oh yes," Catherine sarcastically murmured, "Let's just forget about the stab wound and the missing eye, shall we?"  
John ignored this and descended with one hand on the stairwell, the handguard of Catherine's carbine resting on his broad right shoulder as they reached the bottom, faced with another door. Catherine bent to open her briefcase again, but before she could, the door startled them both by opening automatically. Before it could even open fully, John had push kicked Catherine in the rear, propelling her to the safety of the wall bordering the one man wide door as John himself dove the opposite way to the left, racking the slide on his handgun before leaning around the corner and putting his pistol flashlight on strobe, hoping to blind and disorient any would be shooters. Strangely, there were none to be found.  
"I can get to cover on my own, you know," Catherine irately said as she stood and picked up her briefcase, weapon already in hand.  
"Didn't want to risk it," he said as he focused his eye down the sight of his pistol, the built-in light switched from strobe and back to flood mode, illuminating the room. The reticle on his night sights were still white, no targets front. He checked the calibration of the sights just to be sure by quickly clearing the weapon and pointing it at himself and then Catherine. Both blue, the sights worked. He reloaded the weapon and motioned to Catherine.  
"Cat, take point."  
She nodded and activated the white light on her carbine, not seeing the point in night vision due to John's half-blindness and the effectiveness of the Hexfab uniforms when it came to NIR.  
"Where's the objective? I'm just seeing a bunch of obsolete late 21st century tech," John commented, using his pistol light to check the old glass screens for anything out of the ordinary.  
"It should be in the room ahead," Catherine responded, double checking her GPS, now set to Interior Mode, meaning that it would guide the user within a building.  
John finished checking the obsolete tech and stacked on the door she indicated with her carbine. The two stacked on the door, John holding up three fingers, counting down before kicking the door in. Catherine burst through the fatal funnel of the door to the left, John doing the same on the right, swiftly clearing the much more expansive room lightning fast. Once again seeing no threats, they lowered their weapons and took the time to analyze the room. This one was much larger, two levels to it. On the top level that they stood on, there were multiple workstations, much more modern 22nd century holo-computers replacing the old glass ones of the late 21st century. There was a stairwell on the right leading to the lower level, viewable from the top level through a large glass wall. On this level was a large metal floor, several vats of a strange glowing silvery liquid and a large ring-like device dominating the center.  
Catherine activated her holo-computer in her briefcase, scanning the room, the device saving a 3D image of it, as well as the images on the holographic displays. They displayed all manner of strange things, from human vital signs, animal experiment records, and even molecular structure models of some unknown chemical. One in particular caught her eye, to the point of causing her to set her device down and inspect it further to ensure that her eyes weren't deceiving her.  
"John, take a look at this," she urgently said. He quickly walked to her side, observing something that gave even him reason to pause.  
"Is this real?" He questioned.  
"I think so," she breathed quietly in response. On the screen was a set of three planets. In the center was a large desert planet, orbited by two smaller planets, one watery and the other undeniably green with life. It was surrounded by a small purple gas nebula.  
"They look like they could sustain life," she said quietly, legitimately awestruck.  
The two stared at the image a moment longer before scanning the computer individually and grabbing the data chip out of it. They descended the staircase and approached the vats of the glowing silvery liquid.  
"What the hell is that?" John questioned.  
"That, my boy," a hoarse British voice said out of the darkness behind them, "Is the stuff of the gods."  
The two warriors spun around to face the imminent threat, but were both struck by arrows in their abdomens. Peters looked down, noting that instead of a real arrowhead, it appeared to have a syringe-like tip on it. He suddenly felt weak, his vision blurring, buzzing filling his head as his vision became distorted, metallic, and distant. He fell to his knees, his darkening vision revealing Catherine in a similar state.  
"Cat…" he groaned almost inaudibly as he reached over for her hand, but they both collapsed before they could make contact, surrendering to the dark embrace of the sedative.

It felt like the world was spinning without him, the feeling sickening him. He slowly opened his eyes, barely conscious, the effort weakening him, a sharp stabbing pain present in the back of his head. In his blurred vision, he could make out a man in a black lab coat standing in front of him. He noted that he was sitting in one of the office chairs Catherine next to him, already conscious and glaring daggers at the man in front of them. They were both zip-cuffed to their chairs, but very much alive.  
"You've got five seconds to tell me who you are and why I shouldn't kill you," John growled, earning a relieved glance from Catherine, "And it better be a damn good reason, because I'm not in the forgiving mood."  
"My my, aren't you rude?" The man responded mockingly. "And I must say, good sir, your little friend here isn't much better."  
John growled intimidatingly at the man as he felt for something that would get him free, his eyes never leaving the man. Unfortunately, he'd been stripped of his armor and weapons, wearing nothing but his bloody combat shirt and grimy combat pants. Catherine was the same, leaving him with little hope of escape in his weakened state.  
"Though I suppose it's to be expected," their captor tauntingly continued, turning his back to them and pacing towards the door. "You Americans never were known for your manners."  
John's brain lit up with a spontaneous idea. Remaining silent, he wheeled his chair back to the desk behind him, grabbing a pen and jamming it into the button on the back of the chair, releasing the headrest, allowing him to break the zip-cuffs against the small of his back and charge the man with his pen, fully intending to kill him. However, a masked man in a Hexfab uniform stepped out of the shadows and kicked John in the torso, the inhuman power of the kick sending him crashing through the glass and onto the lower level.  
"John!" Catherine shouted, earning her a backhand from the man in the lab coat.  
"Really, my dear, you should learn to use your inside voice," he said mockingly. "Though, I suppose it's only fair that you join him."  
He proceeded to step back and motion to the black-clad man, who proceeded to grab Catherine by the throat and throw her through the broken glass wall.  
She landed with a crunch on the glass a few feet away from John, still strapped to her chair. She coughed in pain and looked up at him, clutching his ribs in pain as he crawled to her, barely able to move properly.  
"Now isn't that just sweet," the man said as he descended the staircase, hands clasped behind his back. "I knew I chose right when I chose you two."  
"What the hell are you talking about?" Catherine angrily responded.  
"You see, my dear, your President agrees with my research, quite so to the point that he'd be willing to provide test subjects, he even let me take my pick. So, I chose the two that would be the most likely to have some sort of chemistry, that being you two." He knelt by John's blind side, patting his cheek.  
"You love her, don't you boy?"  
"Shut up," he weakly growled, grabbing a piece of glass.  
"Oh no, that won't do at all," the man said as he stood and quickly stomped on John's hand, earning a cry of pain as he released the shard.  
"You see, boy," he grabbed John firmly by the chin, "This would be far less painful if you'd just cooperate." He released him and walked to a control console, powering it up and pressing a series of buttons.  
"Now as I was saying," he began, "I needed test subjects, but for what, you may ask?" He pressed a final button, the giant technological ring powering up, a bluish light emanating from the center, growing to encompass the interior of the ring.  
"For this," he finished. "Those planets you saw were indeed real, and I'd like very much if you two would explore them for me. This…portal, if you will, will teleport you to the main landmass of the water planet, "Aqua Magna," I've taken to calling it. In one year, you'll be returned to Earth, assuming you're still alive."  
"Why in God's name should we help you?" John challenged menacingly.  
"Because, my boy, while you were unconscious, we implanted a small explosive charge in the back of your neck, right at the base of your skull. Should you attempt to deviate from our instructions, should you attempt to remove it, it won't be you that goes up in smoke," the black-clad man stated cooly, "It'll be your partner." He turned to Catherine, completely expressionless, a true sociopath. "Tell me, my dear, would you like to see your boyfriend's head explode? No? I didn't think so." He suddenly clapped his hands. "Now then," he began, "Let's get this show on the road."  
John gritted his teeth in pain when the man's bodyguard lifted him by the neck and dragged him to the luminescent portal.  
"Wait!" He shouted, his voice strained from physical distress. "What intel could you possibly hope to acquire from two half-dead Americans with no kit or methods of self-defense?"  
"Ah, yes, almost forgot." The man turned to his guard, who held out a small hard case. John noted that on the back of his ebony lab coat resided a red hourglass design, in keeping with the arachnid theme of the PMC. He removed two syringes from it, filled with what appeared to be the same silvery liquid as the vats.  
"This liquid, this _nectar_, is a…modified variant of a very odd substance found by one of our remote mining drones on an asteroid orbiting the watery planet. Upon contact with anything inorganic, save a precious few composites, it will act as an extreme acid, corroding it to dust. However," he paused and injected the first syringe into a struggling Catherine's neck. "If it is correctly modified at the molecular level, it acts as a very powerful mutagen, promoting rapid healing, abnormal strength, speed, vision, etcetera."  
Suddenly, Catherine screamed in pain, her form contorting as her muscles contracted and spasmed, her eyes rolling back in her head.  
"CAT!" John screamed as he attempted to launch himself forward, but the inhuman strength of the guard combined with his wounded state proved his efforts futile.  
"However," the man continued, "It does have some rather…undesirable side effects. Temporary, yes, but uncomfortable. The mutagen, you see, will modify your muscular structure on the atomic level, which, as you can see, is rather painful. It's drawbacks, as well as its benefits, are unfortunately temporary, as our current strain doesn't allow for permanent modification. The original substance, however, does."  
"I thought you said it was acidic," John growled, a fierce, wolfish look in his eyes.  
"Right you are. However, there seems to be a specific set of genetic codes that it will actually mutate permanently, though we've yet to find a suitable candidate. But I digress."  
The British man leaned forward and injected the second syringe into John's neck. Initially painless, but within seconds he was screaming in pain, his body fighting against the mutation and losing, making an already painful process exponentially more excruciating. Soon, he joined Catherine once more in unconsciousness.  
"Wetherby, throw them in."  
"Aye, sir." The guard known as Wetherby grabbed both John and Catherine, a bit heavier due to their rapidly increased muscle mass and denser bones, and threw them into the portal.  
"And the parting gift, Director, sir?"  
"Right you are, Wetherby." The man snapped his fingers and a small service robot brought a briefcase to him, which he then threw into the portal. "Really, I should begin writing these things down."

Strange. He felt strange. His body ached, though his mind was too groggy to remember why. His body was dysfunctional…yet he felt at peace. He attempted to open his eyes, but immediately shut them tightly. The sun blinded him, it was as if it was shining only on him. But what harm it did to his eyes, it radiated gentle warmth down on his body. He tested himself further, attempting to move his arm. Finding it functional, he felt the ground he was on. Sand…it was fine sand, the kind one would expect from a tropical paradise. He could hear the waves crashing gently in front of him. Clearly, he was on a beach. He rolled onto his side and shielded his face with his hand, slowly opening his eyes to avoid the blinding flash of light he'd gotten on his first attempt. Slowly, they opened, and he beheld his surroundings. The beach he was almost indescribable on human terms. The sands were white, yet grey cliffs lay behind him, separating the beach from what he assumed from the mainland. The skies were a beautiful blue, and the sun was pure white. Strangest of all, however, was the ocean. The seas weren't their usual blue or greenish color, rather, they were decidedly silver. He turned to his side and beheld Catherine, her eyes just beginning to flutter open. He pulled himself into a sitting position and focused on breathing steadily, not wanting to risk any further damage to his stab wound in his side. The morphine was beginning to wear off, and he knew it'd start to hurt to an incapacitating degree if he didn't find some way to recover or alleviate the pain.  
"John…where are we?"  
He turned his good eye to her and slowly shook his head.  
"Why are there two suns?"  
John raised an eyebrow and actually checked upwards, wondering for a second if she had a head injury. But no, to his bewilderment, there were two gloriously bright suns shining in the sky.  
"I don't think we're on Earth, Cat."


	3. Paradise Lost

**Author's Note: Meant to upload this yesterday, I was unfortunately flooded with school assignments. Poor excuse, I know, and you all have my apologies. You're a great audience, and I thank you for your support and reviews. Speaking of which, I'd like to address a few reviews that were posted, just to clear some stuff up.  
Wound: Haha, yeah, I thought about a few of those options, but this is more in line with my previous incarnation of the story. Though I assure you all, the portal isn't just, "Oh, they built a trans-dimensional portal. Deal with it." There's a reason behind it and how it works, trust me.  
Vest and Bow Tie: Well sir (I'm assuming you're a sir, as that's quite a name for a sir), thanks for all of that, I truly mean it. And yes, Catherine had to have known him. Despite his face being covered, she absolutely knew it was him after a few minutes, which I'll address later in this chapter. As for the British gentleman's plan, I agree, from a non-spoiled standpoint it does sound rather unnecessarily complicated. I'll to my best to make it make sense in the future as more comes to light in the story. As for the age bit, no apologies necessary. I'm 17, so if that's young to you, cool, and you're right, much can be improved on, I'm just amazingly out of practice. I hope to develop my skills over the course of this fic, and I welcome all the criticism and advice you've got.  
With the notes out of the way, on to the story!**

The Toa of Earth.

Chapter Three: Paradise Lost.

John grunted as he lifted the small tree he'd managed to cut down with his improvised hatchet comprised of a rock he'd spent the better part of the day sharpening on another rock, some sort of grassy plant with red flowers that Catherine had identified as "Harakeke," a plant native to New Zealand, that he'd used as a method of securing the stone to a piece of bamboo that he'd managed to break off with his unnaturally increased strength. He wiped the sweat from his brow, his once camouflaged shirt now stained with blood and perspiration, torn in more than a few places. He'd considered removing it, but it was still his best bet at concealment should he need to hide, as he had little to fight with, save his crude hatchet. He gazed up at the twin suns above him, their gentle heat still beating down on him, though less so now, as they were setting. He arrived at the beach and smelled the air. It was distinctly oceanic, but it wasn't quite the same as an ocean on Earth. Still, despite the odd silver coloration of the seas, seagulls were flying about, serving as a very odd reminder of home. He exhaled as he dropped the tree onto the pile of a dozen others that he'd spent the day logging, deciding then to sit for a moment and think in some desperate attempt to make sense of how he'd found himself on another planet.  
At that moment, Catherine surfaced from the water, a few strange seashells in her hands as she wiped her now shortened blonde hair from her eyes. John still questioned why she'd cut her ponytail with his rustic axe, it certainly wasn't painless or even an even cut, and now hung a few inches above her shoulders. She'd reasoned that it'd only get in the way in a survival situation, and John simply shrugged, not willing to attempt to understand her.  
"Next time," she spat, "Let the guy whose job is half in the water do the fishing."  
It was true, she'd joined the Army for a reason, that being to stay far away from any large body of water after she was almost accidentally drowned on vacation. John smirked at this, bowing his head in mock shame.  
"Well, perhaps the lady would like to handle cutting down trees all day?" He said in a mock pretentiously British accent.  
"Up yours," she groaned, raising her middle finger as she slumped against a large log she'd dragged out of the forest to use as a bench. She'd also spent time gathering rocks and making a fire pit, clearly thinking ahead.  
"Bamboo burns, right?" She questioned, eyes shut in exhaustion.  
"I think so," he replied, "But it might pop a bit if it's wet."  
"It's been drying all day, hasn't it?" She retorted.  
"There's still plenty of water and sap inside of it." He responded in a calm, but tired fashion.  
"Speaking of which," she sat up and grudgingly opened her eyes, "We need to find a source of water."  
"Look at the forest behind you," he replied, gesturing to the greenery at their backs. "That doesn't grow from nothing. There's water somewhere on this…whatever this is. I'm more concerned with figuring out where we are, and more importantly, if we're alone."  
"Fair enough," she responded lazily, her eyes having drifted shut again.  
John lay against the sand, taking a moment's respite before resuming his work. He knew the answer to his question already, he knew from the moment he saw that unidentifiably alien, almost mechanical print in the mud.  
They were not alone.

After a brief respite, the two got to work gathering kindling and chopping up the bamboo into smaller pieces, more suitable for igniting the flame. Now, all they had to do was start a fire, and there was their problem, for they had no flint, no lighter or any magnifying surface. The black-clad man had been thorough in relieving them of anything that might be used helpfully.  
John grumbled in annoyance as he went off in search of some method of starting a fire, Catherine staying behind to stubbornly attempt to use a simple stick to cause enough friction, which despite her enhanced physical abilities, wasn't working for her at all due to the general wetness of everything they'd gathered. This continued for a good ten minutes, so stubborn was she, but eventually she gave up and tossed her stick into the ocean in frustration.  
"Dammit!" She shouted, kicking the sand. She stopped and closed her eyes and placed her hands on her hips, slowing her breathing in an attempt to calm herself.  
"We can find our way out of this," she breathed as she slowly opened her eyes again. "I can do this."  
However, her induced serenity was soon smashed into pure instinctive panic when she smelled smoke and heard the shout.  
"CAT!"

John Peters was a man who didn't scare easily. He'd be lying if he said he didn't have a phobia or two, like his fear of uncontrolled fire, and what he saw before him ignited his pyrophobia like the blaze that licked at his toes.  
The world was on fire, and he was terrified.  
There was a beast in the center of it all, some insectoid creature with a metal exoskeleton that gleamed crimson like a ruby. Deep blue glowing angular eyes in its rounded head were staring out at him, unblinking, emotionless. It seemed as if its head, which was at least the size of its torso, was partially transparent. Some..._thing___stared at him from inside the creature's skull.  
"Is that its brain?" he breathed aloud, his phobia taking over his rational mind.  
It raised its arm at him, a crimson flame-shaped buckler attached to it, glowing bright orange at the tips from the heat.  
Then, it spoke.  
"Clean it all."  
It sounded like it was a statement, but it was watching him, as if it expected him to answer in his incapacitatingly terrified state.  
"I…what?" He replied in little more than a hoarse whisper.  
"Clean it all." It lowered its head and stepped forward aggressively. "It must be cleaned."  
John instinctively took a step back, doing everything in his power to grasp onto the shred of sanity in his phobia-distorted mind.  
"I...I don't understand." He spoke with a bit more confidence, though not much.  
The creature raised its head disdainfully, a slight hiss escaping its polished white teeth.  
"You are an obstacle," its voice, definitively mechanical, yet eerily insectoid at the same time, spoke with a threatening tone. It raised its arm, and on its hand was what appeared to be a metallic red buckler shaped like a fireball, glowing orange at the tips, smoke emitting from it.  
"You will be removed."  
Flames crackled from the tips of the crimson shield as the entire flame-shaped portion began glowing a hellish orange. He was without defense, without support, and thanks to the forest burning around him, he was without a means of escape. Peters knew now without a doubt that this creature, this _alien_, was going to kill him.  
"CAT!" He shouted as he dove to the side, narrowly avoiding a stream of white-hot flame, somehow emitted from the squat mechanical insectoid's hand shield. He came up from a roll, breathing erratically, pupils dilated.  
"What the hell are you?!"  
The creature retracted its head, a few exposed gears whirring rapidly as it spoke in its deep mechanical voice one last time.  
"You are an obstacle. Remove yourself."  
With that, it launched its head forward and lowered the transparent part of its skull, which John now realized was no more than a faceplate. A strange blue face-shaped organic…_thing_ came hurtling at his face, red mist trailing from its eyeholes. John flinched and raised his arms to protect himself, tripping over a charred trunk as he instinctively stepped back from the unnatural life form flying towards him.  
"Rah!" The shout came from Catherine as she swung downwards with the bamboo and stone hatchet, cutting a deep and ragged gash into the face-brain, though not enough to cut it in two, getting caught halfway through. This only encouraged her to pin the silent creature against a burning tree, prompting a scream, but coming not from the face, but from the now immobile mechanical body. Catherine leered back, thoroughly disgusted, before viciously hacking once more and cutting the repulsive thing in two.  
Catherine turned to John, breathing heavily, sweat-drenched hair clinging to her face and the back of her neck.  
"You okay?"  
John silently nodded.  
"We…we need to put out the fire," he managed to stammer, doing his best to pull himself together.  
Catherine remembered in that moment his pyrophobia, and suddenly his uncharacteristically cowering behavior made sense.  
"John, come on, let's get back to the beach, we'll be safe, okay?"  
The struggling man stood and picked up both halves of the dead blue creature, then moving to the mechanical shell. He braced his foot against its torso and gripped onto the base of its shield, yanking with all of his might, removing what appeared to be a magnetized grip that held it in place on the creature's 'Hand,' if it could even be called that, it was more of a squarish receptacle. Catherine raised an eyebrow at him, but he just shook his head, walking quickly to the beach.  
"Are you okay?" She asked as she jogged to catch up with him.  
"Fine," he replied tersely.  
She looked down at the shield gripped tightly in his hand, the grip placed on the rear, as if it were meant to be aimed like a pistol.  
"You don't have to be embarrassed. I know you're afra-"  
"I let you down."  
She stopped at this, knowing there was a lot on his mind.  
"I lost it. I couldn't fight back. I had to rely on someone else to save my dumb ass."  
"John, I had your back, just like you had mine!"  
"When have I had your back?" He replied almost angrily, though she knew it wasn't her that he was angry with.  
"When you covered me after that first guy got hit with an arrow, when you helped me after I shot that guy!" She replied, her voice passionate. Nobody berate him more than he did himself. His excuse for this was that he was just 'Bettering himself,' but she knew all too well just how disgusted with his own failures he could get.  
"And twice you were the one who had to save my life." He stopped as he set foot on the golden sands of the beach, a somber countenance overtaking him.  
"I'm sorry, Cat. I really am."  
With that, she reared her arm back and slapped him hard in the face.  
"What the hell?!" He said, more startled than actually hurt.  
"That's for indulging in this bull again. Seriously, knock it off, John, you're not a damned teenager anymore. Get your act together, pull your weight like you have been, or we're going to have a problem. Clear?"  
John nodded his head, knowing that it was very unwise to piss her off.  
"Yes ma'am," he said professionally.  
"Good," she replied, giving him a quick peck on the lips before yanking the shield from his hand.  
"Hey!" He protested as she walked over to their unlit fire and aimed the shield at it.  
"I'm trying to light the fire," she explained, "It obviously operated mechanically, the problem's just trying to figure out how to fire it."  
She looked around the grip, inspecting it.  
"Looks like there's something on the bottom…" she reached to touch the small button on the base of the grip and immediately recoiled in surprise as flames shot forth from the shield. Peters didn't move an inch, determined not to allow his phobia to control him again. Instead, he simply stood as the white-hot flames struck the bamboo, instantly igniting it and vaporizing the kindling.  
"Well…" the surprised woman began, "That was fun."

A pair of armored boots crashed into an otherwise silent forest, their matte black coloration blending with the blackened mud and trees. The once raging fire had been extinguished thanks to a slightly smaller blue-hued being.  
"Another Bohrok fire, sister?"  
The aquatically colored female nodded, her arms raised and glowing a pale blue, moisture from the still living trees and air flowing into her hands, recharging her power.  
"I thought they weren't supposed to leave Mata-Nui," the black and burnt orange armored male said, his voice deep and earthy.  
"Cahdok and Gahdok were loyal, this isn't their swarm."  
"So if not the Sister Queens, who then?"  
The watery woman knelt by a stationary Tahnok, inspecting its opened faceplate and empty Krana case.  
"Someone fought this Tahnok and won."  
The taller one investigated further, looking around for its Krana.  
"It appears that its Krana was taken, is this a Toa we're dealing with?"  
The blue one walked to a charred tree and inspected a splatter of blue liquid, now dried, with a ragged chunk taken out of the center of the stain.  
"No, not a Toa. Its Krana wasn't taken, it was killed." She turned to her compatriot and unlimbered her harpoon. "Get the Bohrok to Jorim, he'll know what to do. Hopefully we can find out why it was alone, and more importantly why it was here."  
He nodded in response, lifting the mechanical beast with ease over his shoulder.  
"What shall we do, Lairika?" He questioned, bright orange eyes gazing steadfastly into her light purple ones.  
"Simple, Derian." Her eyes narrowed, "We must warn the team. There are killers on the island."

The two sat around their fire, not having any trouble keeping warm due to the intense heat the burning bamboo gave off. The night sky shone down upon them, and there were a number of strange stars that they didn't recognize. One constellation of six oddly colored stars seemed to hover directly above them, and a large red star shone almost as bright as the moon in the distance. _Sort of like a flare,_ John noted.  
"What do you make of those stars above us?" Catherine wondered aloud. "It looked like two, the dark grey one and the blue one moved from the other four after a while, then went back a few minutes ago. The fire went out when the blue one went bright…do you think the stars are doing something here?"  
John was completely mystified, unsure of how to respond, though he'd be damned if he wasn't going to try.  
"I think stars are just stars…but I'm not sure that's what those are. When was the last time you saw six stars that moved? Colored the way they are, dark grey, white, silver, light blue, purple, and orange…what are they?"  
Catherine reclined against her log, staring into the night sky, awestruck by its alien majesty.  
"Hey Cat," He began slowly, "When did you figure out it was me?"  
She gave a short laugh, rolling her eyes. "From the moment I stepped off the VTOL, genius. How many other butter bars are named Peters, have your build, unit, and voice? You didn't try putting on the fake deep one until we got on the road, come on!" By the end of this, she was laughing genuinely at his rather sad attempts at concealing his identity and appearing hyper-masculine.  
"Fair enough," he said, allowing a small smirk to crease his lips. "Though to be fair, I knew it was you immediately as well."  
She laughed even harder at this, "That's because I wasn't covering my face, genius!"  
He mentally kicked himself for stating the obvious and settled for joining her in staring at the night sky.  
"Do you think we should check out the forest tomorrow?" He asked.  
"Tomorrow, yeah. I'm just hoping we don't run into what put out the fire, whatever's that powerful isn't something I want to mess with."  
"What if it's an ally?" He countered.  
"Let's not get hopeful," she retorted seriously.  
"I wasn't," he responded, equally grave, "I'm just saying we shouldn't shoot on sight, for lack of a better term."  
"Not like we've got a way of fighting, anyway," she said, gazing back into the night.  
John nodded in response and leaned back against his log, quite tired from the events of the day.  
"Who should take first watch?" He asked, eyes growing heavy.  
"Hm, let me think," she began sarcastically. "We could have the guy who's already half asleep, or the girl who's an insomniac. Hm, tough choice, huh?"  
He smirked and leaned back, closing his eyes.  
"Night, Cat."  
"Goodnight, John."

Four colorfully armored warriors advanced quietly though the charred woods. Their leader, wearing indigo blue and royal purple armor with golden trimming and runes, armed with a shortened spear and a shield bearing her colors, took the lead, the other three in a wedge formation to her left and right. On her right was her second in command, a being whose eyes glowed white with plasma, wearing dirty white and burnt orange armor, a modified Midak Skyblaster loaded with plasma spheres instead of light and an extended rear tube rested on his shoulder, grips in his hands. The other two were the scouts sent out earlier, the black and burnt orange clad one bearing a large spear with a large drill head on the end instead of a spear tip, a sharp obsidian claw on the other end, meant for digging and punishment. The second smaller one bore her harpoon loaded into its launcher, cradled securely in her arms.  
"Derian," the leader began, her voice sharp and precise, the voice of a veteran leader, "What does your Elda tell you?"  
The earthen-colored being touched his hand to his mask, eyes glowing a more intense shade of orange as he grit his teeth.  
"We're close," he winced. "I wish this thing didn't give me headaches whenever I try to find something."  
"Maybe the smeltheads can make you something more to your liking when we get back to Metru-Nui," the orange and white warrior said humorously.  
"You're one to talk, Toa of Plasma," Derian began, his deep voice concealing the humor he intended to convey, "For one who controls heat as much as our red brethren, you act oddly superior."  
"Not act, Derian," he said, gripping the front chambering wheel and rotating it, chambering a plasma sphere. "They're the ones who have to act superior. I know I am."  
"Stow it, Jorim," the leader said, "We're close." She turned to the aquatic warrior on her left. "Lairika, ready your Rau Nuva, they may not speak Matoran."  
Lairika nodded, readying her navy-blue Rau, which contrasted with her light blue body, but matched her navy blue organic muscles and skin.  
"What's the plan, Tessi?" Jorim said eagerly, "Guns blazing?"  
"No," Tessi responded. "These are killers, but they may not know better. Reason first. If they attempt to harm us, respond in kind, but do not break our Code. Do you all understand?"  
The four biomechanical beings nodded and halted at the treeline, staring in confusion at the two beings before them. They were clothed in strange green and brown tight fitting robes, and appeared strangest of all to be completely organic.  
"Let me do the talking," Tessi said quickly. She tapped her mask, stating in a hushed tone, "Deceptions, even in other languages, are powerless against the Rode. Lairika," she turned to the aforementioned blue-hued warrior, "You will be with me. Derian, Jorim, you will flank them from the left and right respectively. Do not engage unless met with force, is the plan understood, Toa?"  
The three siblings-in-arms nodded and at the count of three, exited the treeline. The smaller one, seemingly female, shouted to her compatriot, waking him. He grabbed a makeshift hatchet, looking almost as if it were made by a Ga-Matoran due to its materials, while his partner grabbed a Tahnok shield. The four armored ones tensed at this but halted when Tessi shouted, "Halt!"  
She turned to the two standing at the ready, side by side. "Identify yourselves in the name of Mata-Nui!"  
The two stared at her, failing to answer. They spoke in a decidedly different language, causing Tessi to pat Lairika's shoulder, signaling her to activate her Rau Nuva. The shorter blue Toa reached over with her free hand and placed it on Tessi's shoulder, spreading her power of translation to her leader.  
"Do you understand me now?" Tessi spoke to the two before her. Though they didn't respond, the look they exchanged was proof enough that she now spoke their language.  
"I am Toa Tessi of the Toa Kirikua, guardians of Kirikua-Nui. You have two minutes to explain yourselves and what you're doing on this island immediately before I take you into custody."  
The male held his hatchet forward and slowly set it down on the ground. Tessi, being the cautious woman that she was, chose to keep her weapons in her hands, but did return the show of peace by lowering hers.  
"My name is Second Lieutenant John Peters, UNA Marine Corps, 1st Marine Division, 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, currently attached to the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit. This is Second Lieutenant Catherine McClain, UNA Army, currently attached to my unit." John stared into the glowing golden eyes of the almost cyborg-looking female before him. He assumed she was female at least, she was slightly shorter than the two warriors standing at his side, her voice sounded feminine, if rugged and experienced, and her armor appeared to be somewhat more curved like the blue-hued one beside her. They were all at least six and a half feet tall, with their tallest, the orange and dirty white one, being easily seven feet.  
"Tell me, John Peters, of the UNA Marine Corps, what are you doing on this island, and why did you slay that Krana?"  
John stared bewildered at her, initially unsure of how to respond.  
"If you're talking about the red…_thing_ that tried to kill us, we responded in kind. It was clearly self-defense."  
"You had no need to kill it." Tessi raised her weapons, her spear rested on her shield in a ready stance. "Give yourselves up, or we will use force to subdue you."  
"Tessi," the orange one hissed, "Makuta Teridax kingi, he aha ai mea maua whakararu ki ratau?"  
"Silence," Tessi responded tersely, her eyes never leaving the two in front of her.  
"What," the female with the golden hair spoke, "What did he say?"  
"Nothing important," Tessi said quickly, almost worriedly. "What's important is that you put down the hatchet and the Tahnok shield."  
John placed a hand on Catherine's shoulder and looked at her, a silent conversation ensuing between them.  
This time, it was she who spoke to the techno-organic humanoids before them. "We're just looking for a way off of this island. If you can't provide that, then we'll stay here. We're not interested in being taken captive."  
Her gaze was steely, determined. John was proud of her, but a bit unnerved. This wasn't the Catherine he'd known a few years ago, she'd changed, become every bit the soldier when she was needed to be.  
The golden eyes of Tessi narrowed, visibly weighing her options. Her mask spoke to her, and she was indeed speaking truthfully when she claimed that she only wanted a path off of the island. However, Tessi hadn't stayed alive for this long on good faith, and being a master of Psionics, she knew exactly how to find out what she needed to know. She impaled her spear into the ground and set her shield against it, rapidly approaching the two and placing her hands on their heads before they could react. All three sets of eyes glowed a bright gold as Tessi peered into their minds, sifting through the useless to find what she wanted. They were troubled indeed, and while far from harmless, they were indeed capable warriors, if not nearly as seasoned as Tessi's team, but they were honest. She peered further into their minds, peeling back memories until she found the one that resulted with them being on the island in the first place, sending her stumbling back, breathing heavily as the other three immediately raised their weapons in her defense.  
"Stand down, Toa!" She quickly hopped to her feet, staring down at the unconscious two at her feet.  
"Mata Nui," Jorim breathed, lowering his plasma launcher. "What did you do to them?"  
"Nothing intentional," Tessi replied, equally surprised. She was quite in control of her mental powers, and hadn't known herself to make careless mistakes in decades since her days as an early Toa, newly transformed from Matoranhood.  
"I don't think they've been exposed to psionics before," Tessi noted.  
"Possible," Derian replied, "But unlikely, given how often minds in Makuta's Mata Nui are probed without their even knowing. They must've been exposed even subliminally at some point."  
Tessi shook her head, kneeling over the forms of the two organics, scrutinizing them.  
"That's the thing, Derian." She abruptly stood and turned to her team.  
"They are not of this world."

**Author's Note: So at last this chapter's out. I completely intended to finish it last week, but unfortunately some personal circumstances that I couldn't have predicted arose in my life that completely restricted me from writing, much to my dismay. For this, you have my apologies. Rest assured, I'm still uploading on Tuesdays every few weeks, and rest assured I know what I want to do with this story. For those of you who don't know about the Toa's powers, here's a quick guide for the team you've seen so far. Colors are ordered in Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary/decorative.  
Tessi: Psionics. Indigo, purple, gold.  
Derian: Earth. Black, burnt orange, grey.  
Lairika: Water. Navy Blue, light blue, medium blue.  
Jorim: Plasma. Dirty white, burnt orange, gold-orange.  
I chose a female leader because if you look at the Spirit Stars, there isn't a red one. I chose not to include a Toa of Fire because I think they're a bit overdone, and having a female leader, a Ce-Toa no less (A rather unexplored element), felt unique and right for this series.  
Let me know what you think, and as always, your support and criticism keeps me writing!**


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